In Yawn-Worthy Defense, Man Claims He Was Sleepwalking During Alleged Mugging

Who hasn’t woken up in the kitchen at 4 a.m. with a half-eaten jar of Nutella and wondered how they got there? We always blame sleepwalking, and so is a man accused of trying to mug a man at a casino.

The 27-year-old was arrested in March, when a patron of the Mohegan Sun casino, 81, says the suspect confronted him and a woman with a knife in an parking garage elevator at 10:39 a.m. and tried to grab the woman’s purse, reports the NorwichBulletin.com.

The victim resisted and pushed the man away when he tried to cut the purse loose, say police. He then fled when the elevator door opened, but was tracked by casino surveillance cameras.

The defendant’s attorney says he can’t be held accountable because he was fast asleep, and has had a habit of sleepwalking since he was a child. He’s prepared a “medical defense” using the defendant’s history of sleepwalking.

The defense attorney says the man was taking a nap in his car the morning of the incident because he wasn’t feeling well. He claims he didn’t wake up until the woman in the elevator jolted him out of sleep, and that he ran away because he was confused and scared.

Police say the man confessed to the crime when he was arrested, but that “he did not know why he did it.”